Posts tagged with “Verizon”
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Marco Arment on iPhone vs. Android
Apple’s feeling threatened by Android, as they should be. So they’re systematically targeting and eliminating major reasons why someone would choose Android over iPhone.
But they haven’t yet hit the biggest one: availability on different U.S. carriers, specifically a CDMA edition for Verizon.
Bingo. If the iPhone came to Verizon tomorrow, I would seriously consider ditching my Droid and paying full price for it.
FCC Unsatisfied by Verizon's Response
If you haven’t been following this story already, the linked Engadget piece will bring you up to date. I really enjoyed this sentence from the last paragraph of the FCC’s letter:
The bottom line is that wireless companies can truly earn their desired long-term commitments from consumers by focusing primarily on developing innovative products, maintaining affordable prices, and providing excellent customer service.
Well put.
Getting Brightkite and Verizon to Play Nicely
After hearing all about Brightkite from Brandice and Colin, I decided to take the plunge and try out the service a few weeks ago. In the time since, I’ve become addicted to the service, and I’m constantly amazed at how well thought out the site is. One thing that really bugged me, though, is that Brightkite doesn’t work with Verizon text messages. After being initially disheartened, I found getting around the issue to be pretty easy: instead of text messages, I used PIX messages.
If you take a look at Brightkite’s SMS Guide when logged into the service, you’ll notice a email under “Post a photo to a place.” This is the email you’ll be sending your updates to. To use any of the mobile commands (PDF) with Verizon, just send a PIX message to the email address without a photo attached. Put your command in the “text” field, send the message, and you should be good to go.
A word of caution: if you don’t have unlimited picture messaging, this method may end up being very costly. I’m not sure if Verizon still charges their PIX rate for messages without pictures, but if they do, make sure you’re not going over your allotted number of messages.
Hopefully, Verizon will fix whatever issue is breaking the Brightkite integration soon, so we don’t have to continue to hack around the problem. In the meantime, however, this method should continue to work; I haven’t had any issues with it thus far.